Region
Compass Box divides opinion — boundary-pushing innovators to some, fancy bottles and marketing to others. Orchard House is their fruit-forward blended malt, and it's exactly what it promises: bright apple, pear and pineapple over golden syrup and buttery pastry, finishing on fruit and vanilla buttercream. A genuinely easy-drinking showcase of Scotch's lighter side — but is bright and breezy enough to win me over?
Most of this journey has been Scottish single malts, but today we head much further afield — to Canada. Bearface is distilled at an undisclosed location and finished in three oaks. It's an unusual beast: corn and brown sugar, toasted marshmallow and orange bitters, with a fiery, cinnamon-gobstopper finish. A world away from a Speysider — intriguing, if a touch mysterious. Does different mean good?
A first on my Centurion quest — an Irish whiskey. Redbreast Lustau is made at Midleton in Cork and finished in sherry butts. It's a rich, smooth pot-still dram: dark sherried fruit, liquorice and almond up front, plummy and peppery on the palate, with a long finish of peppercorn, allspice and that lingering liquorice. A change of country and style — and a real treat.
This week I'm trying something a little different — an English single malt. There are fewer than 50 active whisky distilleries in England, around a third the number in Scotland, but that isn't the whole story: most of them, the Cotswolds included, are less than 10 years old (I could find only two releasing whisky before 2017!). A very young industry indeed.
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